Rossi-Blog Comment Discussion

@ Shane D.,

Quote from Shane D.

OG has made a good point. Judging by the attendance at ICCF's and other CF venues (which he of all would know first hand), LENR interest has remained steady through the Rossi era.

The interest of those attending the LENR meetings doesn't coincide with the general one.

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IMO however, there could be an argument made that Rossi brought high public attention to the field, that quiet conferences never did. He surely caught my eye in Jan 2011. That attention he attracted, may have spawned SKINR, definitely MFMP/LFH, and helped rekindle research efforts in Japan, and India. Maybe spurred on the Russians, and helped maintain ENEA funding for Celani/Violante until they retired. Or possibly even helped those like BEC/BLP to attract more investments. In particular, I remember Piantelli/Nichenergy being resurrected with a big infusion from an "angel investor" due the heightened awareness Rossi brought.

Right, that's exactly what happened since January 2011.

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If I am right, the question then is whether Rossi on the whole was a positive, or negative for LENR? That may be too early to know yet.

IMO the answer is very simple: without Rossi, the word LERN would have already been forgotten. The Ecat initiative has revived the field and allowed its refinancing.

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No doubt he will hurt LENR's public image as any conman would, especially so with the scientific mainstream.

Why conman? What right do we have to call him this way for his involvement in the LENR field? For what we know, he could have been contacted as a PR-man, and acted as such.

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But in the long run, if any of those that got a funding boost, or an inspiration leading to their own Ni-H research, hit pay dirt, then who knows, maybe the conman will have his place in science history?

Intriguing question. Does it imply a Machiavellian plan inspired to "the ends justify the means"? Maybe this was the true reason for having resorted to a PR-man who was also a ex-long-runner! Anyway, even if the run will last for centuries the only beneficiary will continue to be the LENR field, not true science, nor people. My opinion, of course.

Quote from Ascoli65

Why conman? What right do we have to call him this way for his involvement in the LENR field?

Read the lawsuit depositions and the Penon report. If you cannot tell why he is a con-man, then he has conned you.

“IF”

Rossi has 1 million ecat home pre orders,

He MUST already have UL approval,

So we have nothing to worry about,

it MUST work.

@ oldguy,

Quote from oldguy

No not at all. A few is not "the whole LENR community".

It is you who wrote "people like Ed, Jed, Melich,..... and others that at the time were singing praise to Rossi". These are among the most representative people in the LENR community. Can you name any important member of this community that did not give any credit to the claimed Ecat's performances?

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And google searches by the public is not what makes a scientific field "dead" or alive. It is the work by the researchers in the field that do that. Some clown on TV may have an interview about the earth being flat and draw lots of people to look them up but that does not mean that people now believe the earth is flat. You are confusing publicity and entertainment with real scientific work.

Are you sure that LENR is a scientific field? The people working in a true scientific field aim at convincing the other members of the wider scientific community, the so-called MSM, that their results are real. On the contrary, members of the LENR field are looking for a "way to convince people that something “real” is involved in cold fusion" (1). In this case, the people to be convinced is the general public, whose interest in the field can be properly evaluated by using Google Trends. This tool shows with no doubt that the Ecat initiative has been very successful in achieving this primary goal of the LENR community.

(1) http://www.infinite-energy.com…e/issue75/colloquium.html

I think you would find that most of the LENR community ignored Rossi just as most scientists do to those claiming alien abductions or flat earth. Most also "ignore" the claims of Randy Mills. If you do not understand that, then you might want to read through the back copies of Krivit's New Energy Times. You might want to read the early analysis (2011) by people like Ekström, Nelson, Reinberger, Cirillo, Rönnblom, Randall.......on and on..... you can find early analysis here if you wish to read..... oh I forgot, you don't read court documents or anything negative about Rossi.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/NET370.shtml

Quote from woodworker

Please tell me what esteemed law school from which you graduated? You seem to have such a keen grasp of legal principles and jurisprudence and how the adversarial system works. I sit in awe.

I watched every Perry Mason show.

@ oldguy,

Quote from oldguy

I think you would find that most of the LENR community ignored Rossi just as most scientists do to those claiming alien abductions or flat earth. Most also "ignore" the claims of Randy Mills. If you do not understand that, then you might want to read through the back copies of Krivit's New Energy Times. You might want to read the early analysis (2011) by people like Ekström, Nelson, Reinberger, Cirillo, Rönnblom, Randall.......on and on..... you can find early analysis here if you wish to read..... oh I forgot, you don't read court documents or anything negative about Rossi.

You don't need to convince me that the Ecat tests were fake. I didn't need waiting for the Doral test and the court documents to realize that the Ecat initiative was only a magic world show. It was already clear after the first public demo held in January 2011, as I did try to explain to Brian Josephson (1), pointing out the main aspects that flawed the excess heat measurement. We therefore share the same opinion in this regard.

On the contrary, I disagree with you, and with many others here, on the attribution of responsibilities, especially on the role played by Rossi in this venture. While it was evident that he raised some skepticism even in the LENR community, there was also a full confidence in the professors who measured and proclaimed the excess heat allegedly produced by his devices. The following excerpt explains this situation very well:

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From http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…@eskimo.com/msg41324.html dated Jan15, 2011:

[…]

This tells us that various professors at the university have been involved for some time, and they designed and implemented the calorimetry. I do not think there is any way Rossi could "fool" these people. I think that would be physically impossible. Rossi may be a crook but he could not persuade Levi to destroy his career.

The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi may have done, or the unexplained fires, or his criminal record (if he has one). Krivit should have said that. I dislike the way he focuses on personalities and allegations, and ignores the technical content of the demonstration.

This situation lasted for years in the LENR community and among the general public.

The Krivit survey you reported came only many months after the January 2011 demo which attracted the interested of many people around the world, some of which are still here on L-F. As shown in the Google Trends chart, the Krivit's incursion only caused a small decrease in the public expectations. Very soon, interest continued to grow even faster until the end of 2011, thanks also to the strong support provided by the LENR community. Only a couple of the people you listed and who contributed to the Krivit's investigation belong to this community, and they are not so representative as the many who were singing praises of the Ecat devices.

(1) Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

So Rossi was a guerrilla marketing exercise by IH & APCO, or the 'government'?

I was quoted:

The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi may have done, or the unexplained fires, or his criminal record (if he has one). Krivit should have said that.

If Lugano had confirmed the previous results, and improved on them, everyone would agree with me. There would be no controversy, despite Rossi's background. Unfortunately, Lugano revealed that Levi and the others are not good at calorimetry. Sometimes, professional scientists are good at one thing but not another. Sometimes they make mistakes. You have to read their papers and follow their work for a while to discover this.

The fact that they made mistakes is probably not connected to Rossi's background. By that I mean:

I doubt that Rossi fooled them. Lugano is on them; they made their own mistakes. Even if he set up the test badly, they should have corrected it, for example, by putting a TC on the cell the way they did in the first set of experiments. (I will never understand why they failed to do that.)

I doubt they are in cahoots with Rossi. Penon seems to be, but I have not heard that the others are. I guess I wouldn't know if they were . . .

Quote from Zeus46

So Rossi was a guerrilla marketing exercise by IH & APCO, or the 'government'?

It was the Deep State in a false flag operation with crisis actors, acting on behalf of the Trilateral Commission.

Check with Abd.

@ Zeus46,

Quote from Zeus46

So Rossi was a guerrilla marketing exercise by IH & APCO, or the 'government'?

Don't know. In many ways the Ecat initiative looks like a kind of pro-LENR propaganda & fundraising campaign, something that could deserve to be taught at the Harvard Business School:

https://www.mail-archive.com/v…@eskimo.com/msg56423.html

@ Shane D.,

Quote from Shane D.

So if the Ecat was a planned campaign for fundraising, ...

A couple of premises. I didn't say that it was certainly a campaign for publicity & fundraising, but that in many respects it looked like that. I already said that I'm not able to draw any conclusion on the true nature of this story. I'm just looking at other possibilities beyond the two major ones that monopolize the debate on the Ecat (ie functioning devices vs. Rossi's scam). Mine are only hypotheses which help me to imagine a more convincing scenario for me, nothing more.

As far as planning is concerned, I think that the development of the Ecat initiative is too much complex to have been planned this way from the start. It's much more likely that the single decisions have been made on the basis of momentary circumstances, keeping only the final objectives fixed.

Finally, the following answers contain only temporary and personal hypothetical explanations. I have no idea of their final conformity with reality. They can change as public information increase.

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… why would they select a man who spent 4 years in jail as their poster boy?

Well, the results show that it has been the best choice for the LENR field.

As shown in the Google Trends graph, in 2007 the popularity of LENR was fading away, due to its rejection by the mainstream science, and the lack of concrete and sensational results. It needed a shock. Due to the fact, let me say, that the underlying phenomena don't exist, it needed big bluffs and someone capable to sustain them for long periods.

The historical members of the community were unable to go beyond little bluffs, ie the usual cherry-pickings and misinterpretations of experimental errors, because they were constrained to move inside the formal rules of the scientific context. Therefore they could only claim few watts of excess heat, and make vague promises to upscale their methods in a distant future, not enough to convince the public and the possible investors of the reality and practical exploitability of the LENR phenomena. Moreover none of them had the capacity to manage a quite complex industrial and financial effort, and to efficaciously promote their own image.

On the contrary, Rossi had all the requisites for being the LENR renaissance man. Being Italian, it was easier for him to contact one of the fathers of the Ni-H method. His controversial past has not prevented him from gaining the public support of several respectable members in the LENR community, and as a consequences get the direct trust from the general public. In addition, this same past eventually allowed to easily concentrate all the responsibilities of the Ecat initiative on a single man, making it easier for the LENR field to get rid of him, while maintaining the popularity and funding that the Ecat initiative had procured.

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Was Doral also part of the plan, or was that their main character going off script to make a few $ on the side?

I can't say. In any case, as said on the premises, it's very unlikely that it was planned in this way from the beginning.

The only thing we can do is keep in mind the main outcomes of the Doral detour:

- It extended the Ecat saga for a period of about 3 years.

- The final dispute between the two parties polarized the public debate, so that the people has been induced to line up with one side against the other, a win-win configuration for LENR.

- In the end, Rossi has kept the money that was given to him in a definitive and legal manner, and the vast majority of the raised funds remained available to the LENR field.

Well, I will say that when reading the JoNP in chronological order, and classifying the details of the reactor, construction materials, the radiation notes, etc., Rossi's narrative has a fairly strong appearance of a sensible progression, moving from one prototype to the next. There are some backtracking parts, which could be explained by an incomplete and evolving understanding of the process that the devices use to make heat. The overarching story he told seemed to be realistic. Mistakes in the main narrative were (originally) few, and could be accepted and equivocated away.

It is only when specific details than can be compared to more concrete evidence, like photo evidence or specific measurement equipment or techniques, that the cracks in the story begin to widen and the suspension of disbelief is dissolved. Some people prefer not to examine the many specific details, and for many of these people the story then appears intact. Real, true stories are a little bit messy and inexact in some details. In this way Rossi's stories, warts and all, resemble true stories more than that of a simple conman, who prefers to leave no loose ends from which a common con might become unravelled.

@ Paradigmnoia,

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Some people prefer not to examine the many specific details, and for many of these people the story then appears intact.

Any relation with what I wrote above? If so, could you please be more specific?

@ Shane D.,

Quote from Shane D.

I gave your post a "like" for it's creativity.

Thanks, creativity helps in figuring out a creative story.

Imagine if you were more creative when you first heard (you said in January 2011) of the Ecat.

Btw, may I ask you what has convinced you the most that the ugly device on the table could have been the technological wonder that could have saved the world? The reliability of the inventor? The authoritativeness of the professors? Or the persuasiveness of the LENR experts who were writing dozens of enthusiastic comments every day on Vortex and on the many other sites popped up on the web as flowers in spring?